The Burning Man replica that sits on top of the Cafe Flore. Photo by Rink.

In celebration of the creative expression and highly evolved concept of Burning Man, Free Run Pictures is planning a premiere screening of its documentary, Burning Man: Voyage in Utopia, at the Castro Theatre on Friday, July 18, with show time at 8 p.m. Prior to the screening, there will be a benefit VIP reception for the Black Rock Arts Foundation from 6:30-7:30 p.m. in the Theatre mezzanine ($75 and $150). Reception guests will enjoy a hosted bar, hors d’oeuvres, meeting film maker Laurent Le Gall and artist David Best, and reserved loge seating. Or filmgoers can pay $10 for the screening alone. Free CD for first 400. Check out the Mutant Mobile parked in front. And enjoy the fire-dancers. Tickets for the screening and VIP Reception are available at frantix.net. Following the screening there is a free party at Cafe Flore, 2298 Market Street, from 10 p.m.-2 a.m., featuring DJ Tamo and drink specials for film attendees. A miniature Burning Man is atop the café, and the roof just might catch fire.

Every year, tens of thousands of people migrate to the vacant heart of the Wild West (otherwise known as the Black Rock Desert in Nevada) to celebrate Burning Man. Without a doubt the experience is extreme in this lost world of huge heat, desert storms, no shade, and no shops. Everybody must survive by themselves by bringing their own food and hopefully their good spirit. These “Burners” mix their urban culture with a certain type of improvised tribalism. According to founder Larry Harvey, the principals are simple. Radical self expression and creation are absolute. No money here. All is based on a gift economy.

The purpose of this documentary, through an extraordinary voyage, is to analyze the conventions, commitments, and syndromes of this event and how it became a movement. Carnival, tribe or mystic retreat? This big uproar for some will stay as a spiritual experience for others. The film depicts the journey of artist David Best through the building of the “temple.” Best dedicates this interactive artwork to departed love ones and to the miracle of life. He offers his own creativity to the community with an annual temple, which some consider a clever anachronism, a miraculous idea or an exemplary symbol. The “citizens” of Black Rock City take ownership of it and write messages to their families, friends, and departed love ones. Within a few days, the temple is full of tributes, and it becomes a sanctuary. The frenzy turns into meditation in that lost desert where the world is reborn each year from its own ashes.
“Voyage in Utopia is a remarkable piece of storytelling,” says Larry Harvey. “It does what Burning Man is said to do. It evokes the inexpressible; it invites imagination to inhabit the unknown.” Filmmakers/producers, Laurent Le Gall, Sandrine Di Rienzo, and Gregory Martoglio, team up to capture the true essence of Burning Man, a schizophrenic testimony of an American society where liberty, tolerance, and individualism often live side by side with competition, totalitarianism, and consumerism.

Laurent, who has been dividing his time between California and France for 10 years, produced his first Burning Man film in 2004. Le Gall explains, “My relationship with America evolves every day and this knowledge allows me to escape from well-known anti-Americanism that has gripped France and other countries over the last few years.” The film depicts his own journey to Burning Man and his experiences along the way.

Just as impressive, the original musical score composed by French recording artist Nelly Mella and Vivian Roost blends a marvelous melody of vocal chants and captivating rhythms. Varying between surreal, haunting, tribal, and euphoric, the music marries the cinematography perfectly to give the viewer an authentic experience of this famed week in the desert.

Billed as one of the best films about Burning Man ever seen, Burning Man: Voyage in Utopia” is sure to inspire a society of cultural rebels and grab the hearts and souls of viewers worldwide.

The Black Rock Arts Foundation (BRAF), based in San Francisco, emerged in 2001 as a small but ambitious effort to enrich civic life through art. Its growth since then reflects a spreading awareness of the benefits community-based art projects can bring to a broader society, despite – or even because of – their origins outside the traditional models and institutions associated with artistic expression. Art can thrive outside the walls of museums and galleries, in public places that encourage direct involvement with people who encounter it. BRAF consistently seeks to include an expanding universe of people to participate in creation, presentation, and experience of art. Many of their goals and techniques grew out of Burning Man and its participants of creative art expression, which is encouraged outside its traditional habitat. The goal is to extend the value and relevance of that experience outward to a broader civic context.

The screening event is sure to be more than a film premiere. Akin to the Burning Man experience, it will be an extraordinary, colorful pageantry of individual creative expression and freedom.